Ten Foot Square Hut and Tales of the Heike

INTRODUCTION

THE translations here presented comprise the Hōjōki or Ten Foot Square Hut, and selections from the Heike Monogatari or Story of the Heike Clan, both of them masterpieces of Japanese literature of the thirteenth century, and dealing with the same period from a different point of view. The Hōjōki consists of the reflections of a recluse who had retired in disgust from a world that was too full of violent contrasts and cataclysms, both of animate and inanimate nature, to allow a sensitive person to find it at all tolerable. If, though there are some Japanese scholars who question it, tradition ascribes this work truly to Kamo-no-Chōmei, it was disappointment at not being allowed to succeed to the ancestral position of Lord Warden of the Shrine of Kamo in Kyoto that caused him to forsake the world and go to live in the hills.

As can be seen from the Heike Monogatari, which describes the period in more detail, Chōmei was not singular in being thus arbitrarily deprived of position and income, neither was he the only one who sought refuge in nature and Buddhist philosophy. At least two of the highest in the land did so too, for we read in the Heike Monogatari that Seirai and Shinhan, thinking it was no use remaining at Court in such an age, even if they became Counsellors of State, retired from the world while still young, Mimbu-kyo Nyūdō Shinhan having the hoar-frosts of Ohara for company and Saisho Nyūdō Seirai living among the mists of Kōya, both had no thought for anything but attaining enlightenment in the next existence. And then there is the sad case of the Dowager Empress Kenrei-monin, the description of whose cell on Ohara is so like that of Chōmei as to suggest that it may have been the original, supposing the Hōjōki to be a compilation of a slightly later date. Be that as it may none of these distinguished recluses have left to posterity so charming a picture of their retirement as has the author of the Ten Foot Square Hut. Content with his simple but tasteful and natural existence, a friend of the moon and the wind, he spends his days with literature and music, varied by rambles over the hills, contemplating the ever-changing landscape, and visits to places of historic associations, especially those connected with hermits like himself. He lived in the twelfth century, but six hundred years had passed since the introduction of Buddhism and all the culture that accompanied it, and long before that the Japanese were a civilized and tasteful people, and the literary output of all these centuries in prose and verse had not been small, so that the language of the Hōjōki and the Heike Monogatari is a well developed and pliant medium, concise and elegant and expressive. And because these classical works have always been regarded as models of prose, there is not so much difference between the writing of that day and the present, far less than there is between the English of Chaucer who wrote a century later and modern English. This is one advantage of the use of an ideographic script perhaps, for though sounds change ideographs do not.

The taste for a retired life of elegance has always been and still is characteristic of the Japanese temperament, as is evident from the popularity of the philosophy of Cha-no-yu or Teaism, which enables even busy people to become temporary hermits in the Tea-room, to be in the world though for a while not of it, like the moon in the market-place. The fixing of the size of the Tea-room as four and a half mats, the size of Chōmei's hut, indicates its descent from the cell of the Buddhist recluse Vimalakirrti who miraculously entertained in it the Buddha and three thousand five hundred of his saints and disciples, and has as it were crystallized and handed down the mood of Chōmei as a historico-philosophical retreat for all who wish to refresh their souls by temporary retirement.

Chōmei was, like most of the aristocrats of his race, an agnostic, though he found the art and ritual of Mahayana Buddhism as it was practised in Japan quite diverting. Thought has ever been free in his country, for Buddhism is a philosophy and Shinto simply an expression of the national temperament, though we find that the feeling of the pathos of things inspired by the Way of Gautama certainly had a softening influence on the rather ruthless spirit of the military men.

It is the narrative of the Heike Monogatari that supplies the background of Chōmei's meditations and tells the story of what was the most dramatic rise and fall of any ruling family in the history of the Empire. After the long peace of the Nara and Heian periods from the seventh till the twelfth centuries, during which the Court Nobles of the house of Fujiwara administered the country under the Mikado, and art and literature and Buddhist ritual flourished in and around the Imperial capitals of Nara and Kyoto, suddenly a quarrel broke out between rival factions at Court, and the military clans of Gen and Hei, or Minamoto and Taira as they may also be called, who had so far acted as frontier forces against the barbarian Emishi and Imperial Guards and Police of Capital, were drawn in on opposite sides, with the result that after the battle they claimed the spoil and were no longer content to be underlings to the Courtiers.

And since the dominion of the whole country was a prize worth holding they were not so content to divide it as they had been their constabulary duties, but fought another war to decide who should prevail. From this emerged Taira Kiyomori as military dictator of the Empire in 1159. Then began a glorious though brief period of prosperity for his family and supporters, including even a few of the Minamoto who had thrown in their lot with him, like that esthetic old warrior Minamoto Yorimasa, famed for his poems and his archery, when not to be a Taira was not to be a man. His sons and his grandsons and nephews filled all the high offices of Minister and Commander of the Imperial Guard, while his sister-in-law was married to the Hō-ō or Cloistered Emperor Go-Shirakawa and his daughter to his son the Emperor Takakura. Kiyomori was probably one of the greatest of the brilliant group of autocrats who have administered Japan from that time to this, but unfortunately for his family he allowed himself to be persuaded to spare the lives of the children who were heirs to the headship of the rival clan, Yoritomo and Yoshitsune. This error of judgment was not lost on Yoritomo who made no such mistake. And so through these two, though not till after his death, downfall came swiftly on his house.

For the elegance of the Imperial Capital has never been favourable to the military spirit, and the men of the eastern provinces and central hills had kept their hardiness better than the younger generation of the Heike. And this also Yoritomo perceived, and made his own military capital in the east accordingly, and there it has mostly remained till the present day. And Kyoto is a quiet retreat for those whose business is philosophy or etiquette or the arts and crafts. It lies in a hollow surrounded by hills, a situation that was not ideal for defence when these hills were tenanted by monasteries full of soldier-priests, nor was it conducive to a bracing climate, though eminently picturesque.

But even before the death of the redoubtable Lay-priest Chancellor of the Heike there were two abortive revolts instigated by dissatisfied Courtiers who had felt the length of his arm, and connived at by the Cloistered Emperor, Go-Shirakawa. The first of these is notable for the pathetic story of the exile of several of these Nobles and the second for the gallant fight at the Uji River and the deaths of Minamoto Yorimasa and Prince Mochihito, son of Go-Shirakawa who was involved with him. Here the turbulent warrior-priests of the great monasteries of Hieizan, Miidera and Nara showed the most unclerical side of their nature and fought for place and power as they never fought for doctrine. These monasteries were a constant menace to the Capital and to all who differed from them on these secular questions, and even the Sovereign hardly cared to oppose them, though since most of the younger Imperial children became Prince-Abbots, his interests and theirs were usually identical.

It was the military leaders the clerics disapproved of most, for these feared neither God nor Devil nor Buddha. And when later on the Minamoto rose under Yoritomo and got the Cloistered Emperor to issue an Edict against the Heike, it was the eccentric priest Mongaku who acted as a go-between for the military chief, though he had incurred the wrath of the Sovereign by jumping over the Palace wall and interrupting a musical performance to ask the Court for a subscription to his temple. And it was the temporary alliance between Kiso Yoshinaka, one of the Minamoto leaders, with the priests of Hieizan that enabled him to seize the Capital and drive the Heike out.

The Heike then fled with the young Emperor Antoku and his mother, Kiyomori's daughter, and the Nii-no-Ama or Nun of the Second Court Rank, Kiyomori's widow, and the Three Sacred Treasures that are the Imperial Regalia, in ships down the Inland Sea, and after attempting to establish themselves in Kyushu, returned and fixed their temporary capital at Yashima in the island of Shikoku. Meanwhile internal strife had broken out among the Minamoto between Kiso Yoshinaka, the Rising Sun General, and Yoritomo, head of the clan. Yoritomo was a cold calculating autocrat, and his wife was another, according to some authorities rather more so, and of a type that might be called Turkic, so deadly was he to members of his own family. Probably he was jealous of Yoshinaka's prowess, as he was later on of that of his brother Yoshitsune. And since Yoshinaka was no Courtier and his men were among the roughest in the land he soon came first to words and then to blows with the Court as well as with the priests and people of the Capital. This resulted in his being so discourteous as to burn the Palace and cause the death of more than one high ecclesiastic, so that the Hō-ō in indignation asked Yoritomo to chastise him.

This he was most willing to do, and sent his brothers Yoshitsune and Noriyori against him with a large army, and he was defeated and slain with his four Demon Kings Imai, Higuchi, Tate and Nenoi, after a very gallant fight from which only the lady warrior his consort Tomoe escaped alive. She was one of the many ladies of strong mind depicted in this work, which incidentally demonstrates, if that is necessary, that the Japanese lady has other qualities than the deferential elegance usually attributed to her.

Meanwhile the Heike had come back to the mainland and entrenched themselves at Ichi-no-tani, not far from the modern city of Kobe, and Yoshitsune moved on to turn them out of this strong position between the hills and the sea.

After a great battle he succeeded, chiefly by his daring and famous ride down the cliffs of Hiyodori to take them in the rear. As they fled to their ships many of their leaders were killed or captured in the fight on the shore and the rest got away again to Yashima. Here Taira Tadanori, the Mirror of Chivalry, was killed and the young Atsumori, and here Shigehira was taken alive. But Yoshitsune quickly followed up his success by dashing across the straits in a violent storm, when he was hardly expected, and burning them out of their stronghold. At this battle of Yashima several famous combats took place, in which the Heike leaders Tomomori, Kagekiyo, and the mighty archer Noritsune distinguished themselves by their gallantry and Munemori, the head of the clan, by his vacillating pusillanimity. The Heike were unfortunate in their chief, for had their forces been led by Tomomori or Noritsune, it is possible that the final tragedy might have been averted.

As it was, however, there was nothing for them but to wander aimlessly down the Inland Sea, and here, in the straits of Akamagaseki near the modern Moji, they were brought to bay and the last great battle was fought in which, partly owing to treachery, they were utterly defeated and the leaders and the Nii-no-Ama the wife of Kiyomori with the child-Emperor in her arms, scorning to surrender, sprang into the sea and perished in the waves. Such is the outline of their tragic story, and little remains to add except that after the extermination of those of Taira blood who still survived, the cold and implacable Yoritomo was able to seize the administration and persuade the Emperor to appoint him Shogun or Military Dictator, an office which his family managed to hold with little interruption right up to the Restoration of 1868. And so deep an impression did the gallant deeds and pathetic incidents of these few years make on the feelings of the men of letters of the time that two distinct works came to be composed, one, the shorter recension, a series of recitations for the Biwa player, which forms the Heike Monogatari, and a longer and more detailed historical account known as the Gempei Seisuiki or Rise and Fall of the Minamoto and Taira.

Thus the Heike Monogatari corresponds somewhat to the Song of Roland or the Sagas of Europe, with which it is more or less contemporary. And owing to the genius of the Japanese people for retaining what is best and most inspiring in their ancient customs, the art of the Biwa player is still a living one, and his recitations of the deeds of these ancient heroes now mingle with the equally stirring ones of the centuries that have followed, up to the Russo-Japanese war and even the Great War. And nothing affects a Japanese audience more than these martial ballads. At any particularly tense passage this feeling shows itself in a spontaneous exclamatory shout from some of the listeners which recalls the Aoi of the old French Ballad; supposing that explanation of this expression to be correct.

But the Heike Monogatari differs from the Song of Roland in being more historical and also in being written in poetical prose and not in verse. Both works are alike, however, in most probably having been composed by priests who had forsaken fashionable society owing to disappointment, Thorold, at irritation from not receiving preferment and the Lay-priest Yukinaga* at a lapse of memory in the course of a discussion on music. And it is interesting to note that Andrew Lang observes that for some reason or other the greatest war poems in Europe have been inspired by glorious defeats, such as those of Maldon, Flodden, Roncesvaux, and Culloden. And to these we may add the prose poem of the Heike Monogatari in Japan.

And it is not only in the Biwa recitations that these stories are preserved, but in the Nō dramas, very many of which are drawn from this work, as well as in the popular theatre and Jōruri or popular ballads and the narratives of the professional storytellers.

Buddhist sentiments play the same part in these narratives as the Christian religion does in the medieval literature of Europe, but, since they are philosophical, do not produce the fanatic frame of mind that derives from religion. This is seen very well in the story that describes Kiyomori, disliked as he was by the priests for his violence to them, as a reincarnation of a Buddhist Saint, and his evil deeds as indispensable in the scheme of things as were those of Devadatta in the life of Buddha. With such an impartial eye does the Buddhist philosopher regard the drama of life that in this narrative it is not very easy to see with which side his sympathies really lie. This is rather a notable trait in the people of his race, who usually seem able to regard such things rather impersonally and enjoy the emotional feeling of a tragedy for the thing in itself.

The priest-soldiers of the great monasteries of Hieizan, Miidera, and Nara, who are so often represented as stirring up trouble in the Empire, and who are specially referred to by the Emperor as one of the things over which he had no control, were no more credit to Buddhism than were the monks of many medieval establishments to Christianity, and their habits were just about as contrary to the precepts of their founder as were those of the latter. But monasteries everywhere tended to become dens of thieves, and it may be said that the quarrels of these warlike monks were entirely about material matters, and they rarely, if ever, indulged in sectarian persecution.

The verses that occur in these texts have been put into the same form as the Japanese metre of five, seven, five, seven, seven syllables. Unfortunately it is impossible to represent in any other language the allusive word-play that is a feature of Japanese verse, so much of the meaning must necessarily be lost.

The selections from the Heike Monogatari are taken from my translation of the whole in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Vols. XLVI and XLIX, somewhat revised. A new version has been made of the Hōjōki, since the excellent translation of F. V. Dickins has been long out of print.

A.L.S.

Footnotes

* cf. the statement of Yoshida Kenko (1281-1350) in the Tsuregure-gusa.

In the time of the Retired Emperor Go-Toba (1184-1221) Yukinaga former Governor of Shinanao was renowned for his knowledge of musical matters, so that he was once summoned to take part in a discussion about them, but forgetting two of the Dances of Seven Virtues, he was given the nickname of The Young Master of Five Virtues, and this he took so much to heart that he forsook his studies and became a recluse. But the priest Jichin, who would take in anyone, however low his rank, if he had any artistic gift, felt sympathy for him and provided him with what he needed. It was this lay-priest Yukinaga who wrote the Heike Monogatari and taught a certain blind man named Jobutsu to recite it. He wrote specially well about the affairs of the temples of Hieizan, and his detailed knowledge of Yoshitsune enabled him to describe him graphically. Of Noriyori he does not seem to have had so much information, for he omits much concerning him. For what pertains to the warriors and their horses and arms, Jobutsu, who was a native of the East Country, was able to tell him what he had learned from these warriors themselves. And the Biwa players of the present day imitate the voice of this Jobutsu.

THE HŌJŌKI

CEASELESSLY the river flows, and yet the water is never the same, while in the still pools the shifting foam gathers and is gone, never staying for a moment. Even so is man and his habitation.

In the stately ways of our shining Capital the dwellings of high and low raise their roofs in rivalry as in the beginning, but few indeed there are that have stood for many generations. This year falling into decay and the next built up again, how often does the mansion of one age turn into the cottages of the next. And so, too, are they who live in them. The streets of the city are thronged as of old, but of the many people we meet there how very few are those that we knew in our youth. Dead in the morning and born at night, so man goes on for ever, un-enduring as the foam on the water.

And this man that is born and dies, who knows whence he came and whither he goes? And who knows also why with so much labour he builds his house, or how such things can give him pleasure? Like the dew on the morning glory are man and his house, who knows which will survive the other? The dew may fall and the flower remain, but only to wither in the morning sun, or the dew may stay on the withered flower, but it will not see another evening.

During the forty years or so that I have lived since I began to understand the meaning of things I have seen not a few strange happenings.

In the third year of the era Angen,* and the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month I think it was, the wind blew a gale, and at the hour of the Dog (8 p.m.) a fire started in the south-east of the Capital and was blown across to the north-west. And everything as far as the Shujaku Gate, the Daikyoku Hall and the Office of Internal Affairs was reduced to ashes in a single night. They say it started at Higuchi Tominokōji in a temporary structure used as a hospital. Now as the flames came on they spread out like an opened